Since I signed off the syndicated Peter B. Collins radio show in March, I’ve been able to zoom out from the close-up view of day-to-day political combat.

On a daily basis, I reflect on the “change we can believe in” that candidate Obama promised us just a year ago. Certainly, the new administration is better than the Bush/Cheney gang on many fronts; and Bush left Obama an economic meltdown and other serious problems that need attention.

But consider:

we still have 135,000 troops and even more contractors in Iraq, with no clear plan or timeline for our exit, just vague promises and the hope that the Iraqis will kick us out next year. Most of the US troops that have left Iraq went to Afghanistan;

the escalation of our presence in Afghanistan is very dangerous, and contradicts some of Obama’s own statements about the prospects for “success” there. He had the chance to reverse direction after the election, but chose to double down on the “good war”;

the massive interception of domestic electronic communications continues, and the Obama Justice Department has reinforced and expanded on the bad legal precedents set under Bush/Cheney. Most Democrats are silent on this issue, and I see no effort to restore our privacy rights.

Remember how they dubbed Ronnie Reagan the “Teflon president”? Obama seems to have a new and improved coating, I call it “Leftlon,” protecting him from challenges from the progressives who helped him beat Hillary for the nomination.

He keeps reaching out to GOP nuts who want to scuttle his tepid health care “reform,” refuses to allow investigations while Cheney spits at him regularly, and expects us to trust the Goldman Sachs Alumni Association to fix the economy that they continue to plunder.

Here are two fresh programs I’d like you to check out. You can download each and/or listen online below. One is co-hosted with me by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, featuring NSA expert James Bamford as guest. The other is my exclusive interview with Mark Klein, former AT&T technician turned NSA surveillance program whistleblower…

• Episode #18 is the first episode of The Boiling Frogs, an interview series co-hosted by Sibel Edmonds. Sibel, who was famously “gagged” by the Bush Justice Department, is now speaking quite freely, and our first show features NSA expert James Bamford. He describes the massive scale of domestic surveillance, the complicity of Democrats in legalizing Bush’s violations of our 4th Amendment rights, and the bungling of pre-9/11 intel by the spook community, especially the NSA.

• Episode #19 is an exclusive 90-minute conversation with Mark Klein, a former technician at AT&T who exposed the NSA’s secret room in San Francisco where they installed a splitter that routes all traffic to the NSA. Klein tells what he discovered, and how big media outlets like 60 Minutes, NY Times and the LA Times spiked or buried his story. The LA Times took his confidential information directly to Intel Czar Negroponte and NSA chief Hayden, then screwed Klein by not running a story and leaving him exposed. Klein also explains how leading Democrats like Sen. Feinstein knew about his revelations, refused to meet with him or allow him to testify, and worked to protect the phone giants and the NSA.

Give them a listen, and give me your feedback via email, or in comments below…

Since I signed off the syndicated Peter B. Collins radio show in March, I’ve been able to zoom out from the close-up view of day-to-day political combat.

On a daily basis, I reflect on the “change we can believe in” that candidate Obama promised us just a year ago. Certainly, the new administration is better than the Bush/Cheney gang on many fronts; and Bush left Obama an economic meltdown and other serious problems that need attention.

But consider:

we still have 135,000 troops and even more contractors in Iraq, with no clear plan or timeline for our exit, just vague promises and the hope that the Iraqis will kick us out next year. Most of the US troops that have left Iraq went to Afghanistan;

the escalation of our presence in Afghanistan is very dangerous, and contradicts some of Obama’s own statements about the prospects for “success” there. He had the chance to reverse direction after the election, but chose to double down on the “good war”;

the massive interception of domestic electronic communications continues, and the Obama Justice Department has reinforced and expanded on the bad legal precedents set under Bush/Cheney. Most Democrats are silent on this issue, and I see no effort to restore our privacy rights.

Remember how they dubbed Ronnie Reagan the “Teflon president”? Obama seems to have a new and improved coating, I call it “Leftlon,” protecting him from challenges from the progressives who helped him beat Hillary for the nomination.

He keeps reaching out to GOP nuts who want to scuttle his tepid health care “reform,” refuses to allow investigations while Cheney spits at him regularly, and expects us to trust the Goldman Sachs Alumni Association to fix the economy that they continue to plunder.

Here are two fresh programs I’d like you to check out. You can download each and/or listen online below. One is co-hosted with me by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, featuring NSA expert James Bamford as guest. The other is my exclusive interview with Mark Klein, former AT&T technician turned NSA surveillance program whistleblower…

• Episode #18 is the first episode of The Boiling Frogs, an interview series co-hosted by Sibel Edmonds. Sibel, who was famously “gagged” by the Bush Justice Department, is now speaking quite freely, and our first show features NSA expert James Bamford. He describes the massive scale of domestic surveillance, the complicity of Democrats in legalizing Bush’s violations of our 4th Amendment rights, and the bungling of pre-9/11 intel by the spook community, especially the NSA.

• Episode #19 is an exclusive 90-minute conversation with Mark Klein, a former technician at AT&T who exposed the NSA’s secret room in San Francisco where they installed a splitter that routes all traffic to the NSA. Klein tells what he discovered, and how big media outlets like 60 Minutes, NY Times and the LA Times spiked or buried his story. The LA Times took his confidential information directly to Intel Czar Negroponte and NSA chief Hayden, then screwed Klein by not running a story and leaving him exposed. Klein also explains how leading Democrats like Sen. Feinstein knew about his revelations, refused to meet with him or allow him to testify, and worked to protect the phone giants and the NSA.